Considering the massive range options in personal finance software on the market today, the most important piece of information when considering which product to buy is what features you’re looking for: If you know what you want, there’s almost definitely a product out there that can handle it.

Quicken is the most popular personal financial software suite on the market, and not without reason; it can handle a wide range of ordinary financial management needs. This includes all the basic features you would expect, such as banking information, bills, online banking and billing interfacing, a number of different reporting options (cash flow reporting, balance reporting, etc, with ability to export automatically to .pdf, etc.), and it has fairly good customer support. On the other hand, Quicken is somewhat lacking in ability to handle personal portfolio information, and lacks an integrated portfolio manager, 401k manager, etc. If you’re looking for a tool to manage your personal finances and portfolio under a single umbrella, Quicken probably isn’t the right choice. If you’re looking for a solid tool to manage ordinary, non-investment-related finances in a streamlined and easy to use way, Quicken may be the right choice. And at about $40, it isn’t terribly expensive.

Another tool that is rapidly growing in popularity is AceMoney. AceMoney has the same basic personal finance tools as Quicken, but with the added benefit of more extensive portfolio handling tools (integrated portfolio and 401k manager, ability to download stock quotes, integrated stock history, etc.). For this reason alone, AceMoney may be a better choice for you, as it does a fairly good job of handling both basic personal finance tasks and portfolio-related tasks as a single program. On the other hand, customer support isn’t nearly as good as Quicken’s, with phone support and live chat support readily available for Quicken customers and not offered at all to AceMoney customers. Overall, AceMoney does more things for less money ($30), but may do them in a slightly less streamlined way. Also, they offer a free basic downloadable version, so it’s easy to try before you buy.

Finally, for those working on a tighter budget, a wide range of free, web-based finance management tools have started to spring up in the past few years. The most popular of these at the moment is mint.com’s finance tools. The tools offered are fairly basic (the service is completely free, after all) and web-based (so probably not a good choice if total security and privacy are a major concern for you), but if you don’t need or don’t want to pay for any of the more advanced tools of a product like Quicken or AceMoney, a web-based option like mint.com (or any of the dozens of others) may be right for you.

In the end, the financial software you choose will depend highly on your specific needs, and the three products we’ve mentioned here are just the tip of the iceberg (there are dozens of others). If you want a well-supported application that handles all basic financial information in a streamlined way, Quicken is probably the right choice. On the other hand, if you want a more powerful tool that can handle portfolio management as well, but may be slightly more difficult to use. AceMoney may be the right choice. Finally, if all you need are basic features for managing your finances and are working on a budget, a free tool like mint.com may be the right choice.